Adventures in Rumor Mongering.

We always feel a little guilty piling on with MKC stories. It reminds us of the unkind comments about Terri Garr’s weight gain and then to find out she has MS and the steroid treatments can cause that.

She seems a nice person. Really.

But on the other hand, it isn’t like that at all since lazy reporting isn’t a congenital physical ailment. So, having shown due sensitivity, we dig in.

_____Background: Pat Shurmur hiring, reporting malfeasance
For the record, I never had a major problem with MKC until she was promoted from her role of writer-about-the-Browns to knowledgable-football-person and asked to offer opinions. She simply fell off the cart, with me, at the time of the Pat Shurmur hiring.

In her Shurmur reporting, she generated a lot of content about improved front-office-coaching-staff cadence and a fair amount of credit-assigning for Sam Bradford mentoring. But what struck me was the zero critical analytical review of Shurmur’s credentials and on-field performance. Having been a Rams’ bettor most of 2010, I watched a lot of that team. They were a cover machine for sure. But even as a casual observer, I was struck by the dumb offense. I truly watched and thought: it’s 3rd/9, why did you call a three yard out route? But fine, I watched a lot of Rams.. maybe an expectation of that level of info gathering is unreasonable. Maybe a review of cackling Rams blogs was to be discounted in favor of ‘league sources.’ Maybe pro-football-reference.com is a blocked site and so she was unable to find that the Rams under OC Shurmur were just bad in the predictive stats of total points (26th) and ‘net yards per pass attempt’ (30th). But the final game at Seattle with a playoff bid on the line where the Rams could manage only two field goals… 184 total yards… outgunned by Charlie Whitehurst… 2-14 on 3rd downs… THIS GAME received no notice from MKC (or anyone else in Cleveland media that I remember). And it happened ELEVEN DAYS before the hiring. How do you miss this? It’s either ‘in the bag for Berea’ or asleep and neither are good recommendations.

19-36, 155 yds, 0 TDs, 1 int for the Shurmur mentoree.

But here we are today and the fact is: as the Browns beat writer for the pre-eminent newspaper in town, MKC is in a position to lead dialogue for Browns talk and is accorded such privilege from national media even though her reporting is typically the repeating of Berea talking points and the re-tweeting of Adam Schefter.

Which brings us to today’s giggle: the running of MKC articles by national outlets.

WR analysis: “No one in this young corps cracked the top 50 in receptions or had more than five TD catches.” (MKC’s analysis cares not for consideration of Shurmur’s offense or Weeden’s discomfort with it or the forward improvement trajectory from the two first year starting WRs.) And “The Browns need two more starting-caliber wideouts.” (!!!),

Not expected by whom? By you, MKC? On what are your non-expectations based? I’ve heard random sports talkers on Cleveland radio not expecting this. That the Browns weren’t expected to hire Rob Chudzinski would have been equally factual and non-insightful a couple weeks ago, no? I guess this is a true statement. But they mean nothing.

Actually it means less than nothing when it spurs national viral repeating of this non-story.

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Even Florio can’t quite make out what MKC is saying.

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Subscription link. I actually pay for this?

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Let’s note here that the original Mallett rumor springs from a Greg Bedard tweet which also appears to be conjured from nothing. As a rule, I’ll always take a Bedard tweet over MKC’s expectation. But in the end, these are two talking heads guessing with seemingly no more information than you or I.

No real agenda or biting closing statement on this. Just wanted to record for the archives an example of the sorry state of sports reporting both locally and nationally.

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_____With respect to Ryan Mallett:

Here’s his 2011Sugar Bowl against OSU.

You’ll see good mobility, short pass touch, long pass accuracy, plenty of arm strength, movement through progressions, mostly good decisions, equal parts under-center/shotgun, and about ten drops by my count.

From where I sit, the fear and loathing of Ryan Mallett is more than a tad over done.

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_____Random great post link.
Over at The Cleveland Fan, @Gotribe31 has a piece on Otto Graham with an interview of Graham’s son. Topics go from inventing the draw play to encounters with racism to Modell to breaking curfew with Sonny Jurgensen. Must read.

It seems like (football writers/reporters/journa-something or others) have created a world for themselves where they don’t even have to start rumors. They just have to have an article or tweet or HALF AN OPINION that is innocuous enough to allow for multiple interpretations – then it (whatever the f— “it” is) gets in the hands of those who either allow it to spark or turns into a California wildfire.

And of course, there is absolutely no repercussion for any of this. Because really, who cares and more importantly, who even remembers? Maybe only because the offseason is so slow does anyone even notice? But then again, that’s probably the exact reason why MKC floats something like this out there. Then her name gets mentioned and maybe an ESPN scroll so she (and not just MKC, but several others like her) can validate their job – whatever sad variation of journalism it has become.

Anyway – to each his own.

Thanks for your blog, Kanicki. You “get it” and there aren’t many people like that around….and are willing spend a sizable chunk of their free time publicly sharing their thoughts in a coherent manner.